ART IN REVIEW

ART IN REVIEW; Karen Kilimnik

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: February 12, 1999

303 Gallery

525 West 22d Street, Chelsea

Through March 20

Karen Kilimnik's multimedia potpourri of nostalgia, projection and adolescent reverie is losing its fragrance. The 1960's, the fashion industry, the Russian Revolution and the history of rock-and-roll waft through this show of paintings, watercolors and altered photographs, but only occasionally do they coalesce.

The paintings dominate, showcased in a gallery that is part ancien regime (sconces of crystal, gold and bronze provide the light), part hair salon (one bright red wall, leopard-spot drapes covering the windows). They continue to be small and jewel-like, but are less adeptly painted than before (the thrift shop paint-by-numbers awkwardness should go), while their fictions have become more psychologically complex.

A painting of a fashion model leaning on one elbow, which resembles a well-known photograph of Diane Von Furstenberg, turns out to be a fantasy self-portrait titled ''Me, in Russia, 1916, Outside the Village.'' The fictive nature of the images is emphasized more in a painting of an eminently 90's fashion model whose caught-in-a-lie title is ''Me Waiting for My Drug Dealer Boyfriend . . . Park Avenue . . . oops . . . Forgot . . . the Village, 1967.'' Perhaps the clearest statement of intent is ''Little Red Riding Hood,'' a mysterious, image of Cinderella's coach in moonlit woods that conflates two tales of disguise, one violent, one romantic.

Ms. Kilimnik's newest paintings, especially a little portrait of Leonardo DiCaprio, can suffer from comparison with Elizabeth Peyton's romantic portraits of rock stars and friends, which are more engaging in color and surface and devoid of narrative guile. But in fact, Ms. Kilimnik is a completely different breed of artist, who blends together Conceptual and performance art and 1980's appropriation with the current interest in female psychology and identity. More and more, she is the star of her remembrances of things past and present, and most effectively in the images that are the least coy.

These are a series of blurry color photographs of the artist that have been amended in rough black crayon, rather like vandalized movie posters. Hairdos and profiles are scribbled in, mascara is added in spiky little marks, while the titles track the artist's changing identities: ''Me as Isabelle Adjani in 'Ishtar,' '' ''Me as Chrissie Hynde.'' These low-budget Cindy Shermans bring the yearning, anger and self-deprecation that fuel Ms. Kilimnik's art to the surface with a directness and vigor that feel like a breath of fresh air. ROBERTA SMITH